Before concurrent engineering, IBM used an organizational structure with independent departments. The designers would toss their ideas "over the wall" to manufacturers. The manufactures would then add ideas and pass the information on to another department. Each department had to approve the work of the previous department. Time consuming disagreements often arose because each department was trying to satisfy different goals. This process proved to be slow and extended the time needed to develop new products. Because of the time to market constraints of the Proprinter team, a better organizational structure was required.
